Innocent III and the Crown of Aragon

The pontificate of Innocent III was the culmination of well over a millennium of controversy about the place of the papacy in the politics of the world. Innocent III ruled when the Church's influence on the political lives of the crowned faithful was at its acme, while, as Innocent explained, the papacy did not have authority over other laymen in temporal affairs. The implications heightened political and ecclesiastical tensions in Aragon-Catalonia, pivotal in resistance to the Moorish invasion, and ruled by a man who was crowned in Rome but now sought an annulment of his marriage. The wars and disasters that followed greatly affected how kings and popes regarded each other, and how the secular and the sacred grew apart. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Dr Damian J. Smith is the author (with Helena Buffery) of 'The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon: A translation of the medieval Catalan Llibre dels Fets', also published by Ashgate, and is Associate Professor in the Department of History at St Louis University, USA.